52 research outputs found
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Children's and Adults' Understanding of Punishment and the Criminal Justice System
Adults’ judgments regarding punishment can have important social ramifications. However, the origins of these judgments remain unclear. Using the legal system as an example domain in which people receive punishment, the current work employed two complementary approaches to examine how punishment-related concepts emerge. Study 1 tested both 6- to 8-year-olds and adults to ascertain which components of “end-state” punishment concepts emerge early in development and remain stable over time, and which components of punishment concepts change with age. Children, like adults, agreed with and spontaneously generated behavioral explanations for incarceration. However, children were more likely than adults to attribute incarceration to internal characteristics. Neither children nor adults reported that incarceration stems from societal-level factors such as poverty. Study 2 built on the results of Study 1 by probing the extent to which early punishment-related concepts in the legal domain emerge from a specific form of social experience—namely, parental incarceration. Children of incarcerated parents, like children whose parents were not incarcerated, were more likely to reference internal and behavioral factors than societal factors when discussing why people come into contact with the justice system. Taken together, these studies clarify how punishment-related concepts arise and therefore contribute to theories of moral psychology, social cognitive development, and criminal justice
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Dehumanization and perceptions of immoral intergroup behavior
This work investigated the extent to which adults dehumanize racists and the correlates of this dehumanization. Three main findings emerged:
(a) Adults perceived racists as less than fully human.
(b) The extent to which adults dehumanized racists predicted the degree to which they reported that ambiguous behaviors performed by strangers reflected racial bias.
(c) This association did not emerge when participants evaluated behaviors performed by their friends, suggesting that views of "racists" in general may not be linked with evaluations of behaviors performed by friends
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The Development and Consequences of Moral Essentialism
Children report that many natural kinds, social groups, and psychological characteristics arise from an innate, internal “essence” that is rooted in biology and remains stable over time. These perceptions persist into adulthood, albeit often in weakened form. This paper argues that in addition to the domains previously examined in the essentialism literature, children—and to some extent adults—also view moral characteristics in essentialist terms. This form of essentialism has important social consequences, including in the area of pro-social behavior and in the legal domain. The body of evidence reviewed here suggests that children’s and adults’ moral judgments depend not just on what people do but also on perceptions of who those people are, i.e., whether they are people of good or bad moral character
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Moral Essentialism and Generosity Among Children and Adults
Children and adults view many characteristics in an essentialist way—as innate, immutable, and biological. Prior work has typically investigated essentialism regarding broad domains (e.g., gender rather than maleness/femaleness). Using the example of morality, the current work asked whether individuals view different components of one domain (goodness/badness) differently and whether such views might influence behavior. Five- to eight-year- olds reported more essentialism than adults; however, both children and adults viewed goodness in more essentialist terms than badness. Although views of morally relevant characteristics in general did not significantly predict generosity (Study 1), essentialist views of the recipient did influence generosity (Studies 2-3). Adults shared fewer resources than would be expected by chance with people whose badness was described in essentialist terms (and consequently more resources than would be expected by chance with people whose badness was described in non-essentialist terms), an effect that did not appear to be driven by demand characteristics and that persisted even when both descriptions explicitly noted that the character would always remain bad. Although adults reported less essentialism than children, essentialist descriptions appeared to influence their behaviors more. This work highlights the need to investigate essentialism regarding specific domain components (e.g., goodness/badness) in addition to the domain overall (e.g., morality), partially because essentialism impacts behavior differently across components. Findings also suggest that emphasizing situational factors contributing to wrongdoing and a transgressor’s ability to change may benefit people when they have committed moral violations
Does “Think” Mean the Same Thing as “Believe”? Linguistic Insights Into Religious Cognition
When someone says she believes that God exists, is she expressing the same kind of mental state as when she says she thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists - i.e., does she refer to the same kind of cognitive attitude in both cases? Using evidence from linguistic corpora (Study 1) and behavioral experiments (Studies 2-4), the current work provides evidence that individuals typically use the word “believe” more in conjunction with statements about religious credences and “think” more in conjunction with factual statements, pointing to two different understandings of claims made with these two terms. These patterns do not appear to reflect low-level differences based on the amount of consensus surrounding a particular claim,
the extent to which the truth of a particular claim is known to the participant, or linguistic differences between religious and factual statements. We discuss implications of these findings for religious cognition (e.g., as supporting the theory that religious credences are qualitatively distinct from factual beliefs) as well as cognitive processes more broadly. Finally, we relate the present findings to prior theoretical work on differences between factual belief and religious credence
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Sensitivity to Ingroup and Outgroup Norms in the Association Between Commonality and Morality
Emerging research suggests that people infer that common behaviors are moral and vice versa. The studies presented here investigated the role of group membership in inferences regarding commonality and morality. In Study 1, participants expected a target character to infer that behaviors that were common among their ingroup were particularly moral. However, the extent to which behaviors were common among the target character’s outgroup did not influence expectations regarding perceptions of morality. Study 2 reversed this test, finding that participants expected a target character to infer that behaviors considered moral among their ingroup were particularly common, regardless of how moral their outgroup perceived those behaviors to be. While Studies 1-2 relied on fictitious behaviors performed by novel groups, Studies 3-4 generalized these results to health behaviors performed by members of different racial groups. When answering from another person’s perspective (Study 3) and from their own perspective (Study 4), participants reported that the more common behaviors were among their ingroup, the more moral those behaviors were. This effect was significantly weaker for perceptions regarding outgroup norms, although outgroup norms did exert some effect in this real-world context. Taken together, these results highlight the complex integration of ingroup and outgroup norms in socio-moral cognition
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“Internally Wicked”: Investigating How and Why Essentialism Influences Punitiveness and Moral Condemnation
Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated that essentialism—the notion that observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases and sometimes decreases moral condemnation. To resolve these discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which essentialism influences moral judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior, the target of essentialism (particular behaviors versus actors’ character), and the component of essentialism (biology versus immutability). Participants punished people described as having a criminal essence more than those with a non-criminal essence or no essence. Probing potential mechanisms underlying this effect, we found a mediating role for perceptions of control and weak influences of essentialism focus (behavior versus character) and component of essentialism (biology versus immutability). These results extend prior work on essentialism and moral cognition, demonstrating a causal link between perceptions of “internal wickedness” and moral judgment. Our findings also resolve discrepancies in past work on the influence of essentialism on moral judgment, highlighting the role that perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior play in moral condemnation
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Integrating Social and Moral Psychology to Reduce Inequality
This article is a commentary responding to the following article:
Lewis, N. A., Jr. (2021). Can we achieve "equality" when we have different understandings of its meaning? How contexts and identities shape the pursuit of egalitarian goals. Psychological Inquiry, 32, 155-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2021.197144
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Children's and Adults' Affectionate Generosity Toward Members of Different Religious Groups
This paper examines children’s and adults’ willingness to give a non-monetary resource—affection—to in-group versus out-group members. In a study of attitudes toward Christian, Jewish, and non-religious people, religious participants—children as well as adults— reported that the religious out-group member was more like them and more likeable than the non-religious character, despite the fact that both characters were members of an out-group. Non-religious participants did not distinguish between out-group characters in response to these questions. Although these patterns emerged among both children and adults, we also found that children reported more affection toward Christian characters than did adults. We discuss implications of the results for the study of generosity as well as for intergroup attitudes, religious cognition, and development
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Children’s and Adults' Perceptions of Religious and Secular Interventions for Incarcerated Individuals in the United States
Religious involvement is prevalent in prisons, a context where questions of moral redemption are particularly salient. We probed the developmental origins of adults' perceptions that religion might lead to redemption following transgressions. Six- to 8-year-olds (n=50 United States residents) and adults (n=53 United States residents) learned about incarcerated characters who had taken religion classes, art classes, or life classes (about right and wrong) while imprisoned. They then rated agreement with statements assessing attitudes toward the incarcerated individuals, the effectiveness of each character’s time in prison, and their likelihood of recidivism. Children were more likely than adults to report that classes, in general, would effectively rehabilitate incarcerated individuals. However, participants of all ages reported more positive attitudes toward people who took religion classes and life classes rather than art classes. Further, participants of all ages reported that people who took art classes, versus religion or life classes, would be more likely to continue transgressing. These findings highlight the important role that religious and secular learning play in perceptions of redemption across development
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